Casey Joseph, executive vice president at Tecore, said that with the overlay of IMS and VoLTE, carriers can now take full EPC and IMS capability and forward locate it to the edge of the network. That means smaller operators can now afford to put the core network out in their market.

“This gives [smaller carriers] a new opportunity to not just build their business but to control their network as opposed to hosting it off someone else’s system,” Joseph said.

The big challenge facing smaller carriers wanting to bring LTE into their market is finding nothing but options that are either too big for their core network or they would have to go with a hosting option and backhaul to someone else’s core, Joseph said.

Tecore follows the same 3GPP standards as the big networks but brings an economy of scale that allows smaller carriers to keep pace with industry technology advancements.

Tecore provides a software-defined core network (SDN) to add flexibility. The company virtualized network functionality years ago, putting it a little bit ahead of the curve on current buzz-acronyms like SDN and NFV.

With the CCA’s recent announcements around its Data/Roaming Hub, Tecore has been busy getting its equipment qualified with the Hub so rural carriers signing on will have solution to drop in place for compatibility with other networks.